In Spousonomics (now retitled as It’s Not You, It’s the Dishes), I came across a brief explanation of David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. Economically speaking, it can make sense to trade with other parties even if you can do something faster yourself, because trading frees you up to focus on higher-value work as long as the transportation and transaction costs are not prohibitive.

I’m slowly learning to let go of more and more tasks in terms of delegation and outsourcing. For example, I’ve been working with someone on developing marketing materials for this business idea around sketchnoting. We want to put together a leave-behind that can help event/conference organizers learn more. The person I’m working with has a lot of experience in graphic design and illustration, although I’m probably more comfortable with the copywriting and sketchnoting aspects of it.

She set this up as a fixed-price project. I’ve worked on similar illustration projects at fixed price, and I’m always careful to specify the number of rounds of revisions included. For revisions beyond that, I work at a specified rate, although I might throw in minor revisions for free. I do this because I know people in both software development and illustration who have gotten burned in an endless revision cycle because of client expectations, but I guess many illustrators do open-ended fixed-price projects instead.

When I hire people to do work for me,I want to make sure that I’m doing right by them as well. I don’t want people to get tired of working on this never-ending project. I want to build on people’s strengths and their career interests instead of running into their gaps. I want to focus on the highest-value activities, going for about 80% awesome instead of spending all the time trying to chase down 100%.

One of the things that I’m learning to do is to be explicit about what I value and what I’m looking for. For example, we were going back and forth on the copy for this leave-behind. It can take a while to get to copy that feels right. The discussion does help me clarify what style I’m looking for (now I have a “Goldilocks style guide” with examples of what’s too formal, what’s too informal, and where I want to be), but copywriting isn’t the key value I want to get out of this arrangement. I’d rather have her focus on the parts where I hope she can really make a difference.

I suggested using filler text like “Lorem ipsum” so that we can play with the layout and the feel of the piece without getting distracted by the words. It’s important to have an idea of the rough structure of the text – short paragraphs? a bulleted list? – but we don’t have to finalize it just yet, and I don’t want her to spend hours wrestling with it if there are better things she can do.

What are those things? Well, let’s think about what I really need help with in terms of a leave-behind. The final form factor is probably something like a half-sheet of cardstock. I want something that I can print at home if I’m in a rush, or have printed elsewhere for extra oomph. It should probably be double-sided for efficiency, but it has to accommodate the imprecise nature of printing on home-office equipment. It should look good in black-and-white, and extra-nice in colour. It should be something I can easily edit. There are a whole lot of things that need to be figured out: layout, font selection (must be a Google Web Font that I can use on my website as well), visual balance, what needs to be drawn.

So, what does mini-success for this project look like? Maybe an Adobe InDesign file (ideally, something that I can also convert to an Inkscape SVG!) with some text boxes in a selected font… I’ll probably need to do the final drawing of any illustrations, so maybe there are just boxes where the images go, too.

It’s a bit different from other things she’s worked on, then, where she designs the piece, writes the copy, and draws the illustrations. It can be odd working on something that seems like something you’ve done before, but isn’t quite the same equation. I know I’ve felt insecure about working on projects like that! If I’m clear about what I value, maybe that will help us make the most of the time we spend working on this project.

So I said:

If you're worried that it'll be too close to "Well, I drew these boxes on this InDesign file and tweaked them a few times until they lined up, and then you sweated over the copy and the illustration and all of those things I usually work on," I'm sure you'll find other ways to create enough value to feel good about it. For example:

"I looked at X fonts and shortlisted A - E. I recommend B because ______, but C is another good fit for you because _______. Both pair well with D if you need to use a different font for emphasis."

"While working on this, I found some examples of marketing materials that you might like. _____ is interesting because of _____, _____ because _____, and _____ because ______."

"You're trying to say too much here. People only need to know ____, _____, and _____. We can save the rest for the website."

"You're not answering enough questions here. We need to bring back that point about ______."

"Here are some sketches of what this could look like."

"That sketch is unclear - doesn't communicate ____ to me. How about these versions?"

"I checked this with ______ and _____ and they understood it, too."

Who knows, maybe it will include answering specific questions about Illustrator and InDesign in case there are little tweaks I can't figure out myself! That would be useful too. =)

In particular, the key values I think I'm getting from working with you are:

Because you focus on graphic design, you're probably exposed to lots more input and inspiration than I am. I'm counting on you to be able to pull out examples and ideas from your stash.

For similar reasons, you may be better able to differentiate between things and explain why something is a better or worse fit. Think of the way people who are versed in colour theory can explain why certain combinations work and what they can communicate, or how someone who's interested in typography can discuss different styles

Because you aren't me, you can push back if I'm giving too much or too little detail, using too much jargon, coming across with the wrong tone, or drawing something that people would find hard to understand. ("I hate to break it to you, but that doesn't look anything like an elephant inside a snake...")

You're more familiar with the Adobe suite of tools than I am. You know what things are called and where they are. So you can get the basics in place faster, and you can help me figure out how to do things (especially if I don't know what those things are called, or which approaches are easier than others).

Part of learning how to delegate is about figuring out where the task boundaries are, so that people feel good about working on and completing various chunks. I'm open to making the copywriting a separate project, and possibly even working with someone else for that. It’s tough, but if I learn how to break things down into projects that tap people’s strengths, and we figure out what makes sense to focus on, that’ll probably work out to a good thing.

There’s so much to learn, and it takes work to learn about delegation this way. I wish I could learn faster or more effectively, but I can’t imagine learning all these things in a class or seminar. Practical experience and mindfulness, then!

It’s odd to notice the shifts in the value I create for people. For example, tonight, Girl Geeks Toronto is hosting a discussion on women in technology. Initially invited to be one of the panelists, I suggested that I might create more value by sketchnoting the discussion so that the conversation can continue beyond the evening. A friend suggested that I submit a talk for TEDxOCADU in January. Talking to the organizers led to the possibility of my sketchnoting the event instead of speaking at it.

Of course, sketchnoting doesn’t preclude participation. I prepared sketchnotes for my “Shy Entrepreneur” talk at the Toronto Reference Library before I gave it, and I could put in the extra time to prepare a presentation for an event I’m already sketchnoting. But a prospective speech tugs at my attention at random times, fills my brain with odd audio snippets and visual concepts, and generally makes life a little crazy before the event. I like the fact that sketchnoting lets me connect with lots of people without the stress of having presentations rattle around my brain for weeks.

Speaking and sketchnoting meet different goals. Speaking positions you as an expert, while sketchnoting allows you to reach more people in the course of continuing the conversation. My primary goal for public speaking in the past had been to ease the process of meeting people – the introvert’s ultimate conference hack, because people start conversations with you instead of you starting the conversations yourself. Channelling other people’s ideas is a different sort of contribution from sharing your own experiences. It’s worth experimenting with, especially as I continue to build skills and collect stories for future talks.

And of course, there are all these other ways I can create value – building systems, writing, social business consulting, and so on – but my attention can be on only one thing at a time, so I can leave the other capabilities for people to discover through my blog or through interaction. I can build a network of people to refer opportunities to as well.

If life is a start-up, perhaps this is a pivot – recognizing that your value proposition is changing in response to what people want and need.